Monday, November 19, 2012

...a property document that is the visible sign of a vast hidden process that connects all these assets to the rest of the economy.” 70% of all small businesses in the United States are started by equity loans on personal homes. Small, independently-owned businesses employ the majority of people in the U.S.

Land use laws are just one way that governments can confiscate much of the value of private property without having to compensate the owner.

We know how wealth is created: by individuals working and saving for years without government interference. Constant interference by government reduces wealth and sustains poverty. Being a government dependent is demeaning.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

A two stage lunar lander with living space in the descent module means with each landing you have more space (even if only for emergency use) for future astronauts. Plus his configuration of engines and ports has lots of merit.

However, a SSTO Red Dragon lander (or the Dragon 2 which I believe will be larger than the current Dragon capsule) will be much cheaper to operate since you do not leave anything behind and only have to refuel it.

Bigelow intends to drop his inflatable to the surface of the moon but I haven't seen any clear concept for that. They're overkill. Regolith provides the radiation shielding anyway, so you can use a much lower mass fully inflatable (Bigelow modules have a hard metal core.) What they need is a ditch digger and skip loader (likely a single rover with bucket on one end and digger on the other) which would probably be attached to the outside of the lander (like the Apollo lunar rovers were.) This rover would be used to dig a trench for an inflated habitat to be covered with regolith. The rover would be operated from inside the lander and later from inside the first habitat.

Assuming no nukes, power is a problem in a two weeks on, two weeks off, solar environment. I would think the best solution would be a lander devoted to providing power with an integrated nuclear power plant.

Once there, development of whatever industrial capacity the moon is capable of supporting would seem to be the next step? Water may only be available in certain locations, although oxygen is available everywhere (and solar power would be enough to extract it during the ~360 hr. day.)

The thing is, the market will really only exist in quantity when people are going someplace besides the moon. Water and oxygen for life support is a very low quantity market. Oxygen for engines of human transports to other places will be the big market if it ever gets started.

Voting machines often/usually have virtual buttons rather than real buttons. This makes it extremely easy to take away a voters choice and replace it with a programmers choice.

A button displayed on a computer screen has two parts, the graphic and the region. The graphic is what you see. The region is what matters. When the graphic is smaller than the region (which is common) you can press the button even if you miss the button by a bit. The region is invisible usually.

What happens when the region of two buttons overlap? That's where Z-Order comes in. One button will be selected and the other will not. It's not random. But here's the thing... buttons are usually placed from top to bottom. When they overlap the last button added, the bottom usually, should be the one selected. If the top button is the one selected this is highly suggestive of an intentional action on the programmers part. It's not an accident.

The party arguing against fraud protection is the party committing the fraud. Eliminate computer voting or make sure the code is transparent to all parties.

They bought the argument that if you're old enough to fight, you're old enough to vote. With what result? The young and ignorant that are not in the military are voting for the demagogues and those in the military are having their votes thrown away.

Nice job stupid party.

Is it possible our founders had reasons for the voting rights they chose?

Friday, November 2, 2012

Why should we go to mars? Because some people want to and there is no counter argument to that.

"Not on my dime." (Assuming we take away this very powerful counter argument.)

I agree, it should and can be done privately without any tax dollars. Actually, zero govt. involvement (other than limited specific cases that we will all pay for anyway) should be the preference of all colonists. Nothing, other than hardware sent in space belongs to anybody on earth. Common heritage of mankind (Marxism) is beyond stupid. What's beyond stupid? Evil.

Wanting and being able are two very different things. We could easily bring the cost of an individual to orbit down from $20m to $2m by doing one simple thing. Send more of them at a time. A Falcon Heavy could put four dozen in orbit for about $2m each without any reusability which would bring the costs down further.

But that may not ever happen. It may be that cost forever prevent individuals to go of those that want to. Is that a show stopper? No. Not if you have a plan that provides private companies the ROI that covers both the costs and allows and incentivises them to transport colonists at no cost to the colonists. That plan should also not make slaves of the colonist. Liberty should be a given. Is there such a plan? Absolutely.

Mars One, as they themselves describe it, is a suicide plan. They depend on life support from earth not breaking down faster than they can replace it. Not a good idea. There reality show idea may cover about a third of their expected costs. But the important thing they get right is to make a plan that only depends on what private companies can produce now or in the near future. They do not depend on any miracle tech to make their plan work. The closest to miracle tech. is the Dragon 2 lander, but this is a SpaceX product and I would not bet against that happening.

Assume Musk and Zubrin are wrong and the cost never comes down below a million per person. Assume it costs $100m or more per colonist to get them to the surface of mars (which can be done by not sending them a few at a time.) Can a company make a profit sending forty colonists to mars? Which requires at least six or more landers waiting for them in mars orbit and some already on the surface with supplies.

I've calculated it could cost as little as $3b to get 42 to the surface of mars, but let's say it's $10b or $20b.

How do we provide the incentives to a private company? It's not about the cost as much as it is about the profit. "Show me the money" is all it really takes.

Unowned property becomes owned when it is claimed and defended. The good news is those governments that could make a credible claim are part of the OST and legally can not make a claim. Historically, property claims can be made by anyone, from governments to individuals and entities in between like corporations.

The way to make it legal is to be reasonable and set a precedent that others can not ignore. Once owned, property is bought and sold having a chain of title that starts with the claim. Why this is legal is that's the way it has always worked. We can not allow any government or the UN to claim people as chattel belonging to their government. Slavery, by any name, must be abolished. People must exercise their liberty by simply claiming it. Colonization gives free people an opportunity not found on earth.

So a settlement charter that specifies reasonable claims has the potential to provide all the funding required and to do it profitably at today's costs which will go down as time passes and more and more colonist take advantage.

Individual claims should provide about a million dollars to every colonist.

Company claims should provide a thousand times that [for each colonist transported.]

So if it costs the company $10b (including those darn expensive spacesuits that individuals can't afford) they will net $30b over time and faster as more colonists arrive.

Spacesuits will break down. Most martians will hang theirs up in the closet and rarely use them so extras will be available. Another reason for not sending colonists in dribs and drabs.

This is an incremental approach. It's simply a SpaceX, "go directly to orbit", rather than an Xcor, "we'll get to orbit eventually" approach. What make it incremental is keeping profit in mind all along the way.